Page 7 of Tell Me Where It Ends

Parking ground in 20 minutes.

It’s not just a location. It’s a code. Caps. Masks. Oversized hoodies. Fake hair appointments. Private elevators. Shared burner phones.

We used to be so good at this—at hiding. Like spies in our own lives. Every time we disappeared into the shadows together, it felt like the world stopped chasing us.

But that was before. Before the fame got too heavy. Before love became a liability. Before ournames stopped being our own and turned into hashtags.

My fingers twitch around the phone. If I go, I might risk my career even more. If I stay, I’ll never know what he wants to say.

I close my eyes. I can hear the softfumpfof a blanket being folded, the quiet rustle of magazines being stacked neatly on the coffee table.

Shin is creating order—a small, futile act of control in a room that’s rapidly losing it. He’s trying to act normal. Like I’m not teetering on the edge of something irreversible.

Twenty minutes. Ticking down like a bomb in my chest.

What do I do?

?Stay in the apartment with Shin.

Turn to page 30

?Sneak out to meet Suho.

Turn to page 40

?Clear my head and go for a walk alone.

Turn to page 48

4a

My Manager, Kang Shin

The phone in my hand might as well be a live grenade.

I’m still staring at the message from Suho—a text that isn’t a request but a summons. I know, with the kind of bone-deep certainty that only comes from making the same mistake on a loop, that replying will be catastrophic. If we get caught,Dispatch—that awful celebrity gossip site—will have a field day.

Across the room, Shin is quietly stirring a cup of instantmisugaruin the small kitchen area of my temporary safe-house apartment, like it slotted neatly into the everyday rhythm. The grainy, comforting scent of roasted barley drifts over—asmell from a life I barely remember. A life before scandals started showing up like clockwork.

His eyes flick over to me, then to the phone in my hand. “Who’s that?”

He asks calmly. Not accusing, not prying. Just… observing. He reads me like a script and knows a line is missing.

“Nobody,” I lie again, the words tasting flimsy and thin.

I lock the screen and toss the phone onto the cushion beside me, screen-down. Out of sight, out of mind. A total lie, but a necessary one.

He holds my gaze for a beat too long, silent analysis running behind his glasses. But he doesn’t press. Shin never pushes; he just waits for the inevitable implosion. He turns back to the counter, gives the mug one last stir, and sets it on the coffee table in front of me. Warm. Stable.

Everything Suho isn’t.

We sit side by side on the sofa, silence humming with what we’re not saying.

Shin mindlessly flips through TV channels, his thumb skipping past anything resembling news or entertainment. He lands on an old historical drama and hits mute.

We sip our drinks, neither of us watching the ridiculously attractive leads—a king in the Joseon era falling for a peasant without a PR team in sight.

After a few minutes that stretch into an eternity, Shin gets up.